


It's Nice to have a Friend

by agoodpersonrose



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Broken Engagement, Childhood Memories, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Internal Conflict, Light Angst, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Other, Patrick Brewer is Gay, Patrick Brewer loves David Rose, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodpersonrose/pseuds/agoodpersonrose
Summary: He’s found the perfect woman. Kind and loving to him when he needs it, funny and witty and able to match his comedic spirit. She knows his ugly and his pretty and has stuck around for it all. But he still can't marry her.A small look into Patrick and Rachel's journey in reclaiming their friendship, and starting anew.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer & Rachel, Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 9
Kudos: 94





	It's Nice to have a Friend

Patrick has been in this position one too many times.

They are sat at a nice restaurant; not the one where he proposed, one with just slightly lower ratings down the street. It’s nice enough that it’s clear that he made an effort, but just too nice to be a casual dinner. He is clearly trying to send a message, and Rachel is reading it loud and clear.

They are seated in a dark corner, Patrick is twiddling his thumbs, and Rachel can see it coming. She’s worn a black dress. Already prepared for mourning. She keeps twirling a strand of her auburn hair around her finger; a nervous tick she does when she’s nervous or upset, which Patrick knows, because he knows everything about her, and yet he still can’t do it.

He’s found the perfect woman. Kind and loving to him when he needs it, funny and witty and able to match his comedic spirit. She knows his ugly and his pretty and has stuck around for it all.

When he broke his wrist in third grade, she sat inside with him during play time since he couldn’t run around with the other kids. It was a hot sunny day, and he had spent the last week staring out of the window sullenly watching games of tag and bulldog play out across the court. Rachel distracted him with colouring in books and puzzles; he liked to be challenged even then and got incredibly competitive over a game of scrabble. She just threw a letter tile at him and laughed; told him that if his brain got any bigger his skull would break too, and then he’d have to wear a cast on his head.

When her parents divorced just as they started high school, he had let her cry on his shoulder in the tree house of his own garden for weeks in a row. They sat together, legs swinging beneath them as she whispered secret stories of how her parents were miserable but had tried to hide it for her. How she hated that it was happening but so relieved at the same time. How sometimes she wished she wasn’t an only child so that she could experience this with someone else. Patrick silently wished he could be that for her.

Instead, when Rachel wasn’t asked to prom by Christian Schafer, the boy she had had a crush on for months before, Patrick had stepped in and asked her. They had awkwardly slow danced together and ended up making out around the back of the gym, the steady beat of _Teenage Dirtbag_ echoing out from the hall, accompanied by the sound of squeaking shoes and heavy breaths.

It only got worse from there; Rachel had been an amazing friend, but he resented her being his girlfriend. They broke up four times before they even left school, over silly teenage drama that he let get out of hand. He had lost his virginity to her in his first car, parked up the hill by a field where nobody would see them, he had broken her heart three days later when he told her he just didn’t think they were a good match.

They’d been on and off ever since. Patrick has never tried to do the maths for how many times he and Rachel have been on a break or broken up, but it’s certainly in the high double-figures. He would risk a guess at around forty times in their almost fifteen-year relationship.

The last time, he had gone on a spree of casual flings and hook-ups. He smiled at girls in clubs and let them take him home, closed his eyes and tried to calm his breaths as they used each other for basic pleasure, making his leave before they can kick him out and showering for an hour.

He had turned back to Rachel in a desperate attempt to feel something again, and it had worked for a while. They agreed to go slow; friends for a while, but ‘hanging out’ turned to dates, turned to sleepovers, and Patrick was right back where he started. He worked hard to make sure Rachel was satisfied, allowing himself to get lost in his own head in an attempt to prevent himself from losing steam in the middle of it.

When he proposed he thought he was doing the right thing. But the thought of actually marrying Rachel weighs on his chest like a tonne of iron.

Every time he envisions their life together, he imagines the white fenced house they would have, far enough away from his parents that they feel independent but close enough to visit every Friday for dinner, and to watch the baseball together.

He can see it now. The litter of red, curly haired children, all gums and gaps when they smile, clinging to his leg as he chucks one in the air, the scattering laughter echoes in his brain. They would let Rachel soothe them to sleep on her breast as she rocks them back and forth, and later on he would turn for that comfort, before pushing her way with a strangled excuse for why he needed it in the first place.

The thought makes him sick.

The most frustrating thing is that Patrick knows that their married life wouldn’t be perfect. He knows that this image of coming home after work and kissing Rachel on the cheek and relaxing into an armchair with a beer is just a glorified idea of what he thinks they should have.

In reality, if he were to go through with this wedding, he would make her miserable. Every single day he would be at war with himself, and he already takes it out on her.

They fight so much already; there is no way that marriage would solve the problems they already have. Patrick isn’t affectionate, or perhaps he’s too affectionate but he doesn’t feel genuine. They don’t spend enough time together, but they tire when they are in each other’s company for too long.

Written down on paper, Rachel and Patrick make the perfect couple. Except for one major detail; Patrick can’t love her right. He knows the pain that divorce brought her, and the fact that he is even considering that factor before their wedding is, according to his friends, a ‘massive red flag, dude.’

Rachel is staring at him now. They haven’t said anything since they were seated in the restaurant and it’s getting weird. But he doesn’t know where to start; how to explain to the girl he met on the first day of kindergarten, who shared her grape juice with him when he dropped and spilled his apple, that he can’t pretend to love her anymore.

He’s saved by a cheery looking waitress, black leather menus tucked under one arm and a bright grin plastered on her face as she approaches the table.

“Hello, welcome. My name is Bethany, I’ll be your server for this evening. Here are your menus, can I get you started with some drinks?”

Patrick blinks, mouth going dry as Rachel just turns to the woman with a sympathetic smile. “We’ll just have your house red, thank you.”

“Of course, I’ll get that right over for you. You take your time with the menus and I’ll be back to take your order whenever you’re ready.”

They accept the menus and open them, but neither looks at the listed food, instead choosing to stare at each other blankly.

“Will you tell me why this time, Patrick?” Rachel asks. He studies her for a while, looking for a sign of fury in her stance, some yelling or some anger to make him feel better. Instead, he finds defeat, and dejectedness. She pleads with him with her eyes, and he feels his resolve break.

“I just can’t seem to make it work,” he mutters.

“Then talk to me, you’re not in this alone. We’re supposed to be a team.”

“You don’t understand, I can’t make it work in my head.”

“What does that even mean?”

“There is no way I will ever be satisfied with all this.”

She looks hurt by this, and Patrick wishes he could take back the words that caused that expression, but they are already out there. “You don’t think you will ever be satisfied with me, you mean?”

Her voice is bitter, and they fall silent again as they waitress drops off their drinks and silently makes her escape. Rachel has tears flowing down her face by now; tears that Patrick wishes he hadn’t caused, that he could help. He’s so used to helping, but they aren’t in the tree house now, he can only make this worse.

“I don’t know what it is, it just feels like I’m doing something that I shouldn’t be doing,” Patrick says slowly, hoping she’ll understand what he has failed to grasp. “If we get married, I’ll make you miserable, Rachel.”

“ _If_ we get married?”

“I can’t go through with it. We need to stop going around in circles, we need a clean break.”

“There is no way of us having a clean break, Patrick. We have always been in each other’s lives. I thought we’d always be in each other’s lives.”

Now it’s Patrick who’s crying; hot tears overflowing from his eyes and falling from his lashes as he blinks. “I don’t want to stop being in each other’s lives. I just can’t marry you.”

“I know,” Rachel mutters, screwing her hands up in her napkin. “Can you leave now, please?”

He hesitates, reaching out a hand to unclench hers, but stopping halfway. He has no right to do that anymore. Instead, he taps his fingers against the thighs of his jeans and stands slowly, turning and hesitating again before heading towards the door with barely a look back at the girl he was supposed to marry.

The next morning, he sets out on the road, looking for his answer.

***

The car ride home is long, but Patrick is happy to do it purely to watch David’s glee at creating a road trip playlist; his unexpected excitement when passing roadside attractions (including but not limited to the largest paperclip in Canada, and the longest toy train track in Ontario).

Patrick feels like a gleeful spectator as his fiancé switches from slumping against the window, head tipped back and snoring like an engine, to chewing on red vines and wiggling happily in his seat.

He finds he’s not as nervous as he perhaps should be. After they had agreed on a date to visit the Brewer family, Patrick had sent Rachel a text to give her a heads up. He hadn’t been expecting that his ex-fiancée, and current fiancé would conspire against him to unionise, and effectively strongarm him into attending a night of drinks at the pub around the corner.

He finds himself nervous to see Rachel again after all this time, but David convinces him that it’ll make him feel better to at least see his old friend, so he goes. They sit around a tall pub table in the bar around the corner from the high school. It’s familiar in all the wrong ways; the wooden walls closing in on him as he fidgets nervously with his hands in a locked grip against David’s.

Patrick notices her before she spots him. Her auburn hair standing out against the crowds of half-familiar faces. She has a bag slung across her shoulder and is wearing a dark blue bomber jacket. Her face breaks into a hesitant smile as they lock eyes and she approaches almost timidly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she does so.

“Patrick,” she says softly, standing still to one side as if waiting for the invitation to sit.

“Hey Rachel.”

It’s awkward for a frozen moment, and then he’s standing, opening his arms up and hugging her tightly. He had thought that any contact would confuse him, but the brief hug only confirms to him what he already knew. That Rachel is harbouring no resentment; that she is as relieved as he is to reconnect, and that he’s missed her.

God he’s missed her.

He coughs as they pull apart, turning back to David as if to ground himself. His fiancé grins at him impishly, and Patrick can already predict the ‘I told you so’s’ that will follow on the journey home. He raises his eyebrows in faux resignation, but David’s smile just grows as he takes his turn to greet Rachel.

She takes her seat across the table, hopping up onto the too tall bar stool that Patrick used to help her on to.

“Hi David,” she says, turning to him.

“Hi Rachel.”

“It’s so good to finally meet you properly. How was your first visit to the Brewer house?”

David spares Patrick a quick glance before huffing out a sigh. “Honestly? Overwhelming. It’s like I don’t know who I’m getting married to!” Patrick frowns in confusion and looks cautiously at David. “I mean, all those trophies saying _Best Sportsmanship._ What is _that_ all about; the Patrick I know almost pops a vein every time he loses a Baseball match.”

Patrick huffs out a sigh of annoyance and relief as Rachel laughs in response and settles back to enjoy the sight of his two most important people getting along.

He allows himself to zone out of the conversation for a while, marvelling in the strange experience of his two worlds colliding. He grins when David pulls his hand out to show off his rings and Rachel coos approvingly, sending him a discreet wink and a smile across the table as David preens at her response.

“They’re gorgeous; and I’m even more excited to see what you do at the wedding. Patrick has told me all about your eye for design.”

“Well, I’ve got some ideas ruminating--”

“--Oscillating,” Patrick interrupts, earning a blinding grin from David.

“Oscillating,” he confirms. Then, with no discretion, David downs just a little too much drink from his glass, and looks at it as if in surprise. “Oops, I’m all out. I’ll get the next round. Leave you two to talk.”

David raises his eyebrows at his fiancé as he stands from the table and heads towards the bar while Patrick and Rachel watch him go with matching expressions of incredulity.

“Well--“

“He should have practiced that more,” Patrick mutters, blowing air through his teeth. “The exit did feel a little strained.”

“I gather you have something you want to talk to me about?” Rachel asks, her ever knowing eyes turning on Patrick, who winces and nods.

He picks at his damp beer label nervously, staring down at the bar table with Rachel’s eyes on him all the while.

“What?” she asks, seeming concerned. “What is it? I’ve not seen you this nervous since I dared you to climb the huge oak tree around the back of the Jones’ house.”

Patrick lets out a weak chuckle. “Rightly so," he teases. "I was stuck up that tree for an hour before the firemen arrived with the ladder.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been as afraid of Clint as I was in that moment.”

Patrick nods, remembering his dad’s red face; the way he had shaken Patrick loosely almost as soon as his feet had hit solid ground, and pulled him into a hug so tight it felt like he would never breathe again.

“Come on then, out with it.”

Patrick takes a deep breath to steel himself and shifts in his seat as he starts to talk. “I was wondering. I mean. It was David’s suggestion really. I know we’ve been through a- well, a rocky road, what with the whole broken engagement and running away thing. I just- Well, if you were willing, I was wondering if you would possibly agree to be my designated Stevie for the wedding.”

There’s a beat of silence where Rachel looks at him incredulously.

“Okay, I see you’re going to leave me to translate that sentence,” she says after a moment, and Patrick dips his head in embarrassment.

“I mean- Well, David isn’t having a best man for the wedding, his best friend is called Stevie, so she’s going to be his best- person?”

Patrick looks over to find Rachel’s eyes tearing over, and a look of surprise on her face.

“Look, Rachel. You’re my best friend. You always were my best friend, and I know I haven’t been the best to you, especially when we were in the midst of all our--”

He trails off but Rachel just waves a dismissive hand for him to continue.

“But when I was thinking of who I want standing by my side at the end of the aisle, the only person I could think of was you.”

“--And me, I hope?”

Patrick smiles as his fiancé comes up behind him balancing three drinks in his hands and placing them carefully on the table. “And you of course, David,” he answers, smiling as he receives a kiss on the forehead in appreciation.

Rachel accepts her beer with a smile and takes a slow sip of it, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” she asks, suddenly seeming uncertain.

“There is nobody else I could possible ask, Rachel.”

The smile is slow growing, but soon enough Rachel is looking between David and Patrick with a toothy grin. She holds out her beer and the two men clink their own drinks against it and all take slow sips. “You know, this was far better than your proposal to me,” she says cheekily, biting her cheek as David laughs and Patrick blushes. “I’d be honoured. Thank you for asking.”

“Thank you for accepting.”

“Okay, so I have had some ideas for a colour scheme but obviously I need your approval on your dress--”

Patrick smiles and takes a backseat, letting himself enjoy the sight of his two most important people leaning their heads close together and chatting happily.

***

At the end of the aisle, Patrick awaits the arrival of his soon-to-be husband. He chews his lip and shifts between his feet nervously as he waits for David to appear from behind the curtain. His parents sit on the front row of seats, beaming up at him with tears already forming in their eyes, and Patrick reaches his hand up towards his mouth to start chewing on his hangnail. Before he can, Rachel slaps his arm away with a disapproving look.

“That’s a bad habit,” she murmurs as he grins wryly back at her.

“Hm.”

Rachel tucks a smile into the corner of her mouth, so reminiscent of David’s common expression that for a moment Patrick is blinded by it.

“He’ll be here soon.”

Patrick nods silently, still rocking from side to side on his feet. “Wish he’d hurry up,” he mumbles moodily, earning an elbow to the ribs.

“Hey, you’re okay right?” Rachel asks, her voice suddenly turning serious. Patrick smiles at her concern and nods quickly.

“Never better.”

“Good, I’m glad.” She goes silent for a moment, and Patrick goes back to staring at the curtain at the back of the town hall, willing it to open and reveal his husband. “Hey, Patrick?”

“Mhm.”

“Thank you for letting me be here.”

This catches Patrick’s attention, and he turns to her with a soft look. “Thank you for agreeing to be here. You’re my best friend, and I wouldn’t want to do this without you here.”

Rachel nods slowly and reaches out to squeeze Patrick’s arm one final time. Before they can say anything more, the members of the Jazzagals in the hall stand up and move to the sides of the room and start to sing.

Patrick looks forward into his future, his past standing supportively at his side all the while.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had half of this sat in my files for months and months, and I thought now was a good time to finally edit it and post it. I absolutely adore Rachel so I really hope I've done their relationship justice! 
> 
> Thank you for reading! ✨


End file.
